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"Tonight we commemorate the crucifixion. Tomorrow we vote and realize the resurrection," Jesse Jackson told a crowd of thousands outside the Capitol in Madison, Wisconsin, gathered on a blustery late afternoon April 4 to remember the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., and the April 5 election in Wisconsin.

Sanitation workers who marched with King when he joined their historic strike in Memphis, Tennessee, in April 1968 stood with Jackson on stage, as he linked their struggle to the current struggles of union workers, the poor, and working people all over the nation.

Michelle Shocked rocked the crowd, singing spirituals and union songs and was joined on stage by a spontaneous chorus of firefighters with bagpipes, dressed in full Scottish regalia, for "Joy in the Morning."

The bagpipes returned to stand with Jackson as he offered a prayer for King.

After a moment of silence, he said, "We reflect upon the America he found, the America he left, and the dream." He prayed that "men and women in high places with hard hearts will hear our plea. Amen. Bagpipes."

And then the bagpipes played "Amazing Grace," as the crowd joined in, humming.

Jackson reminded everyone that King stood against the "triple evils of racism, militarism, and economic exploitation."

He preached: "Multiracial democracy: that's King democracy. Multicultural democracy: that's king democracy. Stop war and invest in peace: that's King democracy."

"One bullet cannot kill a dream or a movement," he said. "Dr. King is alive today because he lives in us."

He reminded the crowd how democracy and the struggle for economic justice and labor rights were intertwined in King's dream. And then he urged teachers to register their students to vote and lead them to the polls on April 5.

"Come alive April 5!" he got everyone chanting.

The rally, organized by We Are Wisconsin, was the culmination of a day of 30 events around the state and more than 1,000 around the nation to commemorate the 43rd anniversary of King's death and the struggle that continues today.

"Martin Luther King was assassinated on April 4, 1968 while supporting striking AFSCME sanitation workers in Memphis who were fighting for the right to collectively bargain for a better life," Karen Hickey of the Wisconsin AFL-CIO said in a statement. "Yet 43 years later, in Wisconsin and across the country, well-funded, right-wing corporate politicians are trying to take away the rights King gave his life for: the right to collectively bargain, to vote, to afford a college education and justice for all workers, immigrant and native-born. This year to commemorate his sacrifice, Wisconsinites organized throughout the state to revive the King's dream."

Dennis Dattlaff, a respiratory therapist from the UW hospital came in hospital scrubs with a Partnership for Quality Care logo -- a project of SEIU and AFSCME unions. "I'm concerned about care of patients. The way things are going, the more people come into the ER that don't have any insurance, that's going to raise insurance rates for everyone," he said.

Wisconsin history professor Will Jones spoke out about Wisconsin's progressive labor history, and how public employee unions "didn't just fight for their own members," in many cities, as union membership declined, "they were the only advocates for people of color."

Protecting labor rights means protecting the middle class and economic justice, speaker after speaker declared. Despite Walker's divisive appeal to private sector workers who have seen their own benefits decline along with union membership, it is the public sector employee unions he is attacking who are fighting for a decent life for everyone. One woman carried a sign: "Don't like your benefits? Join a union!"

Tuesday's Supreme Court election, which pits corporate-financed, pro-Walker Republican David Prosser against JoAnne Kloppenburg is the next stop in the battle in Wisconsin.

Some teachers across the state, as part of an April 4 day of action, held a massive civics lesson on MLK and labor rights. Teachers at Malcolm Shabazz, an alternative high school in Madison, began registering students to vote after Jackson's last visit, when he came to the school and talked about the civil rights movement and the importance of mobilizing young voters for change.

Madison East High School students, who held a teach-in outside M&I bank before the rally, plan to wear red on election day to show their support for Wisconsin workers.

By Wendell Berry

Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front

Love the quick profit, the annual raise,
vacation with pay. Want more
of everything ready made. Be afraid
to know your neighbors and to die.
And you will have a window in your head.
Not even your future will be a mystery
any more. Your mind will be punched in a card
and shut away in a little drawer.
When they want you to buy something
they will call you. When they want you
to die for profit they will let you know.
So, friends, every day do something
that won’t compute. Love the Lord.
Love the world. Work for nothing.
Take all that you have and be poor.
Love someone who does not deserve it.
Denounce the government and embrace
the flag. Hope to live in that free
republic for which it stands.
Give your approval to all you cannot
understand. Praise ignorance, for what man
has not encountered he has not destroyed.
Ask the questions that have no answers.
Invest in the millennium. Plant sequoias.
Say that your main crop is the forest
that you did not plant,
that you will not live to harvest.
Say that the leaves are harvested
when they have rotted into the mold.
Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.
Put your faith in the two inches of humus
that will build under the trees
every thousand years.
Listen to carrion—put your ear
close, and hear the faint chattering
of the songs that are to come.
Expect the end of the world. Laugh.
Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful
though you have considered all the facts.
So long as women do not go cheap
for power, please women more than men.
Ask yourself: Will this satisfy
a woman satisfied to bear a child?
Will this disturb the sleep
of a woman near to giving birth?
Go with your love to the fields.
Lie easy in the shade. Rest your head
in her lap. Swear allegiance
to what is nighest your thoughts.
As soon as the generals and the politicos
can predict the motions of your mind,
lose it. Leave it as a sign
to mark the false trail, the way
you didn’t go. Be like the fox
who makes more tracks than necessary,
some in the wrong direction.
Practice resurrection.

Wendell Berry is a poet, farmer, and environmentalist in Kentucky. This poem, first published in 1973, is reprinted by permission of the author and appears in his “New Collected Poems” (Counterpoint).